Oh yeah, that guy.
Tim Pawlenty, who still has apparent dreams of running for president again, says the tea party movement is just like the Occupy Wall Street movement. I don't think he understands
either one:
As to the Tea Party, keep in mind, you know, it’s one slice of a broader coalition. They overplayed their hand here. One of the attitudes you gotta keep in mind when you negotiate: The person with the leverage wins. They didn’t have the leverage here.
But you know, there’s an analog in the Democratic Party to the Tea Party. When you look at groups like Occupy, when you look at groups that want to just recklessly defund the Department of Defense, they don’t represent the whole Democratic Party. And the Tea Party represents only one slice of the Republican Party.
Aravosis points out the primary flaw with the (at this point very old and tired) argument, which is that the "tea party" is in large part in control of the Republican Party. The movement may have ended up spectacularly unpopular, but no matter—their congressional advocates were still able to shutter government even at the expense of the party, and considerable corporate and media (i.e. Fox News) backing over these last years has allowed them the ability mount fearsome primary challenges to Republicans who don't toe their line. Setting ideologies aside, the Occupy movement was unquestionably an unfunded, grassroots, even impetuous effort; comparing that to an anti-tax agenda mounted by Dick Armey and other top-tier conservative lobbyists and sold via the auspices of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and whoever else could be wheeled out to those first "tea party" events.
More interesting to me is the Pawlenty attempt to downplay the "tea party" movement as a bit part of Republicanism. Understandable (see again: spectacularly unpopular!), but stupid; we just finished a government shutdown and near-default led entirely by the members of that caucus, and there was no meaningful counterefforts made by any other House Republicans in opposition. Didn't happen. There were members who boldly muttered they would vote to reopen government if that vote was allowed—but none of them took even minimal steps to see that vote happen. John Boehner is widely held to not be a member of the tea party group, but had no apparent willingness or leverage to stop what was obviously a destructive and absurd set of actions. The tea party as a grassroots movement may have decayed into what at this point is little more than scattered groups of conspiracy theorists and militia-esque loons, people who think that gun confiscation is around every corner and that Obama's secret armies are hiding underneath every couch—but in Congress, where it counts, the conspiracy theorists and militia-esque loons are in front of the podiums, and on the committees, and giving grandiose speeches about how Obamacare will doom us all, immigration will doom us all, even the slightest of gun safety regulations will doom us all, believing basic climate science will doom us all, and so on.
Pawlenty may consider them one slice of a "broader coalition," but the "broader coalition" has accomplished jack-squat. Every act taken by this Republican House has been in service to the far fringe. To the point, because this needs repeating yet again, of near-default.